theoryofliteratu00inwell

Literary History 275
as the Dewey decimal system offers to a library 5
but such peri-
odical divisions have nothing to do with literary history proper.
Most literary histories, however, divide their periods in ac-
cordance with political changes. Literature is thus conceived of
as completely determined by the political or social revolutions of
a nation, and the problem of determining periods is handed over
to the political and social historians, whose divisions and periods
are usually and without question adopted. If we look into older
histories of English literature, we shall find that they are either
written according to numerical divisions or according to one
simple political criterion—the reigns of the English sovereigns.
It is scarcely necessary to show how confusing it would be to
subdivide the later history of English literature according to the
death dates of the monarchs: nobody thinks seriously of distin-
guishing in early nineteenth-century literature between the
reigns of George III, George IV, and William IV; yet the
equally artificial distinctions between the reigns of Elizabeth,
James I, and Charles I still have some survival.
If we look into more recent histories of English literature,
we find that the old divisions by calendar centuries or reigns of
kings have disappeared almost completely and have been re-
placed by a series of periods whose names, at least, are derived
from the most diverse activities of the human mind. Though we
still use the terms "Elizabethan" and "Victorian," survivals of
the old distinctions between reigns, they have assumed a new
meaning inside a scheme of intellectual history. We keep them
because we feel that the two queens seem to symbolize the char-
acter of their times. We no longer insist upon a rigid chrono-
logical period actually determined by the ascent to the throne
and the death of the monarch. We use the term "Elizabethan"
to include writers before the closing of the theaters, almost forty
years after the death of the queen; and, on the other hand,
though his life falls well within the chronological limits of Vic-
toria's reign, we rarely speak of a man like Oscar Wilde as a
Victorian. The terms, originally of political origin, have thus
assumed a definite meaning in intellectual and even in literary
history. None the less, the motley derivation of our current
labels is somewhat disconcerting. "Reformation" comes from
ecclesiastical history; "Humanism," mainly from the history of